


A Torch Song

by AceQueenKing



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:42:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: “Oh,” she shudders; pain and betrayal haunt her face. Hekate embraces her, hoping to provide some comfort. “Then she has gone where I cannot follow. She is lost to me, and at my own brother’s hand.”“Perhaps you cannot go to her,” Hekate says, touching her cheek in comfort. “But I can, and I will.”





	A Torch Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bardsley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsley/gifts).

> _You think I'm not a goddess?  
Try me.  
This is a torch song.  
Touch me and you'll burn._
> 
> ― Margaret Atwood

Of course Hekate sees the girl as she descends to the Tartarian depths.

Hecate sees everything; Hecate exists everywhere, and nowhere. At first, she offers no input; she feels for the girl, but her place in the pantheon requires a low profile.

But then, too, she sees the mother searching, wailing: mourning.

And Hekate sees too, how no one helps her.

Helios turns his eye blind. Zeus encourages her to accept it. Hades himself offers no succor – and the girl, in fairness, cannot offer anything.

And Hekate, who may be everywhere or nowhere, is not without a conscience all her own.

“Why would you appear to me?" Demeter asks when she tells her, her voice quiet. She has given up hope. Hekate does not need to use her torch to see proof of that. “You are a titan. I fought--”

“You are an Olympian without allies.” She holds out her torch, allows her crone-face to reflect the light of the truth onto Demeter’s face.

“So I am,” she says, defeated. “And so you come to mock me in my loneliness.”

Hecate shakes her head. “I come to relieve your pains. I can tell you where she is.” That gets her attention; Demeter’s honey-eyes look up at her.

“You would do that for me?” Trembling, her voice; how Hecate’s heart aches for her.

“It is what is right,” she says. “She has been taken to the underworld. Lord Hades, your brother, has taken her there.”

“Oh,” she shudders; pain and betrayal haunt her face. Hekate embraces her, hoping to provide some comfort. “Then she has gone where I cannot follow. She is _lost_ to me, and at my own brother’s hand.”

“Perhaps you cannot go to her,” Hekate says, touching her cheek in comfort. “But I can, and I will.”

* * *

For the girl, she appears as a maiden. The mother needed a crone to soothe her; the daughter needs a playmate.

“Did he take you too?” She whispers; she is hiding out in the poplar groves of the underworld, groves that never existed until their lordship’s sudden courtship began.

Persephone cannot possibly know this.

“No, dear heart. I live here, among other places.”

“Are you one of his…” The girl’s cheeks color. “His…consorts?”

She issues a sharp bark. “No, no. I come from the land of your mother at present.” She gently reaches out and cups the girl’s cheek. “She worries for you.”

“Is she – is she alright?” The girl's voice trembles. “He took me so suddenly. I didn’t have time to tell her—I know she worries.”

“She’s hurt, but she’s alive. And working on your release.” She will not tell Persephone of how Demeter plans to do so; there is no need to concern her further. “More importantly: how are you?”

“I’m alright.” She shrugs. “It’s…it’s not…he hasn’t treated me poorly.”

She nods. She is sure he has not – but a home not of one’s choosing is not a calm place to be.

“Do you want to be here?” She asks. Persephone looks at her a long moment and sighs.

“He is not unkind, but…” She flinches. “It isn’t my home. And I didn’t choose to come here. Sometimes I think it is not a bad place, but…It is not my place, is it?”

“It could be if you wanted it, but since you don’t…” She pauses; she feels the weight of what she is about to say ripple through time. “Mind you eat nothing. The underworld holds her own laws.”

The girl nods, serious. And there is something of the mother in her face, something there that gives Hecate pause.

“Is it possible….” Persephone purses her lips. “To be of both worlds? You said you are of many lands. Here and my mother’s lands, and other’s too?”

“It was willed to me by your father, long ago.” The girl’s eyes widen – she would not have thought her so old, Hecate supposes, but now is as good a time as any to learn that immortal appearances can be deceiving. “But yes. There is always a way, if that is what you want.”

She hands the girl her torch, and Persephone’s hand doesn’t shake when she takes hold of it.

“Let it light your way,” she says, simply. “The path is different for everyone. You must find your own.”

“But even if I –” She looks at Hekate with a furrowed brow. “I didn’t choose to come here! If I choose to leave, would he let me?”

“Hades is bound to the rules of the Underworld. He cannot hold another divine unless your father so allows him – the Heavens were never meant to be his purview.” Hades’ only hope in keeping her is for her to want to stay; once Zeus catches on to Demeter’s workings, Hecate imagines he will quickly demand Hades return the girl unless she wishes to remain of her own accord.

“I see,” she says, and stands straighter. “Tell my mother I’m –I’m alright.”

“You’ll tell her yourself.” She squeezes the girl’s hands. “Have faith. You will see her again.”

“I see,” she says. “I see.”

She lights her torch.

And Hecate watches her go, seeking her own path.

Hecate walks through the ether. She turns her eyes toward the heavens, and sees Demeter’s land dying, and Zeus scrambling.

And she hopes the girl learns her way quickly, for she suspects her choice comes soon.

* * *

When the time comes, the girl chooses her own path. Six seeds eaten for the interloper; six seeds held behind for the mother. Hekate helps Hermes, who treats the whole thing as happier a return than he perhaps should, as they load the new Queen into her royal chariot. Once abducted, now chosen.

“Are you sure?” She whispers in the girl’s ear.

“I am sure.” She gives Hekate a hug. “Your advice was helpful, thank you.”

They ride in silence for a few moments, trotting through the hellscape and into the less dire parts of the underworld. Persephone’s realm, now, Hekate thinks.

“You have been a friend to myself and my mother both,” the new Queen of the Underworld says. She smiles, and already, without touching the surface, she looks radiant. “I should wonder, Hekate, if you would be my advisor? There is no other who can come with me between worlds and you have…you have helped my mother, in a time when few would.”

She is taken back by the offer; Hekate, by virtue of her station, holds no titles, in one realm or another. But then again, Persephone herself holds no world truly, does she? Six months in one world, six months in another. Everywhere and nowhere.

And someone, she thinks, will have to ally Demeter’s fears.

And someone, she thinks, will have to keep Hades from stirring up troubles.

And someone, she thinks, will need to help this girl, as she transforms between young bride to eternal queen.

“I would be honored,” she says, and lights her torch as they hit morning-light, almost blinding after a few days in the dark.

Demeter comes, and the world thaws from icy reign to gentle spring almost in moments. Hermes whoops, and even Hekate, so carefully neutral so often, smiles.


End file.
